For Dinner: None Yes, I am hungry,
thank you very much.
Mood: . Confronting the ol' deathwish demon
Written in the Year of our Lord 3580, April
7th, Saturday night.Location: Somehwere near the river Nibulon, but that's
all I know.

Shock from the wound-- combined with me being so
exhausted-- made me fall asleep, suicidal though it might be. My
night was haunted with dreams, nightmares brought by pain. There was a
chilling one of Hell, where I was looking down the gullet of a giant amorphous
demon, and there were little tiny buds, like tastebuds, inside and on the
outside of its mouth. Each bud,as my vision grew closer, was a human head,and
that human head was screaming. It was grafted onto the demon, and forced
to share its thoughts, and the sheer evil of the demon's thought caused
each tiny bud-head to scream from its intensity. There were thousands of
the bud-heads, and they were all screaming, but they were drowned by the
gigantic demon laughing....

Then there was one of Heaven, an oddly pristine
landscape, with beautiful green hills and mountains, and chariots of fire
passing by overhead to a crystalline castle or city on a hill.. There
were souls walking there, but they were sexless and remade, and no longer
seemed human, more like crystal creatures of unbearable clarity and beauty.
I understood the ecstacy of Heaven was not in being in Heaven, but was
in the state these souls were in. It was a beautiful place, but it was
just a place. The ecstacy was in being remade. It was like the souls were
permanent receiving sets for a bliss station...

I came to, shaking myself out of my dreamstate.
It was the early morning. Rather than green hills of Heaven, the
vegetation was all crimson, or mostly crimson, as green predominated on
Earth. Two small moons were in the sky, both near the horizon, as the sun
was preparing to come up....

I was wet, in the mud, and covered with
bites by insectoids. It could have been worse. By rights I should have
been eaten.....

Then I heard a cough/growl behind
me.

Moving very slowly, very
cautiously, so as not to alarm--anything--I angled my head,--only to see
a large beast, somewhat suggestive of a large overmuscled wolf, or a bear
with a wolf's head. It stood over four feet high while on all fours, with
a mouth of wicked looking teeth. It's small eyes had the same faceted look
of the sentient Lokiites, and the childbond links between the legs did
not seem to hinder it at all.

"A tyrbund," I breathed.

I wondered why I was still alive.

Tyrbunds for a long time
were a domesticated breed, similar to horses and oxen on old Earth during
the Middle Ages. However, they often turned on their owners. All higher
animal lifeforms on Loki used the childbond, which meant they had no feeling
of love for parents, or for that matter, pseudo-parents, like pets often
do for their masters. A tyrbund would work only when compelled to, by whip
or goad. There was no sense of loyalty between a beast and its master.

Since Loki has gotten more automated,
many of the tyrbunds--no longer needed as a beast of burden-- have gone
wild. Imagine a black bear with the teeth of a wolf.....

The only thing I can
figure out that saved me was the smell of me and my dried blood. I didn't
smell right. My blood being bright red instead of bright orange
would have possibly deterred him too. Lokiite life would be slow to eat
something it hadn't before....

There's an animal who...in this
metal rich world, with more metals to play with, is literally poisonous
at the first bite...like cyanide is to a human, death coming very quickly.
It also heals quicker than most animals. It's called a tulg, Several
other animals have the same sort of "defense" which wounds the animal,
but kills its attacker. Lokiite life would learn caution from that.
So if the tyrbund thought I didn't smell like a Lokiite, he wouldn't attack
me. Maybe.

He growled as I first...painfully....got
up. The wound on my side wasn't very bad, but it hurt to move. I moved
very slowly, in a non-threatening manner....but I did try to reach for
a large stick.

He made no move for me, although
he followed my every movement. Slowly I backed away, moving into the tall
reedlike plants on the riverbank.

My heart had almost
stopped beating audibly....when I heard another cough/bark
behind me.

I didn't look, I didn't try,
I just ran, ran, ran. Fear of big animals eating you is a primal
thing, a childhood thing, a hindbrain thing. I ran not caring what direction
I was going in, not even feeling the pain at my side, literally running
for my life. Minutes later, I stopped. Breathing hard, I had the shakes,
I was hungry, I was in pain, big things were out to eat me except
they thought I might be poison...

I was by a small
pond. I suddenly realized I couldn't see the river. I wasn't even sure
which way the river was. I had just panicked.

Words that you
don't usually associate with priests were popping up, over and over...

Finally I sighed,
peed (I had just woken up a few minutes ago, remember? Although it seemed
like several lifetimes....) and took stock of my situation. Which was not
good.

No buildings
in sight. No roads or paths in sight. Not even sure which way the river
was. I should go to the top of the hill and see what I can see...but there
were animals out there, bogeybeasts whom I didn't understand. I'd do that
later. I stopped and cupped hands, and at least had some water. The odd
taste of Lokiite water was heavy, but bearable.

I just wanted
to give up. I stared at the pool, and thought about my wife, and my kids,
and a mocking inner voice went, Go ahead, you'll be with them. You love
them so much, and you don't doubt the afterlife, do you? Or are you
a hypocrite as a priest?

It wasn't a
demon, not in any supernatural sense. It was an old pesonal demon, a deathwish
that had manifested itself a couple of times in my life. There was
at least one suicide attempt I made, that haunts me still. Now the
seductive voice of cessation was back again. It never really left.
It's part of me. I thought of the traditional Catholic answer
to suicide, but my deathwish only whispered, Oh, come on! You
don't have much chance of surviving. Do you really want to starve
to death, in the midst of plenty? Do you want to be eaten by a tyrbund
which has a cold in its nose, or knifed by some Lokiites who don't notice
your weregild necklace until too late?

Or do you not really
believe, and you're just afraid to find out you've been wrong all these
years, that you gave your life to a lie? But even if that's the case, all
it will mean is sweet peace. Only if your God exists, and is cruel enough
to send you to everlasting fire for doing the sensible thing, will
you lose. Surely you can't believe a loving God would be that cruel, do
you?

I hate it when I don't
have good answers for those questions. There was part of me that always
found the idea of peace, of cessation, of nonexistence, appealing. Yet
I didn't move toward the pool. I wasn't taking this Virgil's tour of Hell--
only to end up in theWood of Suicides. No sadder scene is in literature,
for me.

Yet I recalled my wife, laughing
and making my every deed full and complete, when I realized I finally wasn't
lonely anymore. When I would wake up, and there would be a beautiful
woman under the sheets with me, and touching her lightly, and having her
stir as our skin touched.
I remembered my laughing daughters
on the playground, and wanting me to push them on the swings, and them
riding my sholders. I remembered one blowing out her birthday present
and the way they squealed at Christmastime when opening their presents.

I wanted the three females
in my life....the lovely one who made me less lonely, and the two we created
together, and whose laughter made our lives even greater. The ones that
the fire had snatched from me.

I wanted them so bad it was
worse than the pain, or the hunger, or the fear. I wasn't going to do anything
to endanger being with them forever.

If I'm wrong, and there's no afterlife,
then I'll never know it.

If there's a different afterlife,
there's no way to choose....there are too many choices...so I just try
to lead a relatively decent life while here.

In a sense....and this sounds
odd for a priest to say....I didn't trust God. I know that sounds heretical,
but this is the same God that allows earthquakes, and disease, and other
things that make life miserable. I'm not saying that God isn't
loving and kind. I can think of some reasons He might allow such,
but other reasons are wrapped in Mystery. I trust Him in the long
run, but I can't always understand, or trust what will happen, in the short
run. I don't pretend to know all the answers, so I'm not going to
risk eternity on how I second-guess God.

Thou shalt not murder.
I have no guarentee that doesn't also mean...murdering myself.

I sat by the pool,
and the waters lapping sounded like the laughter of children. The wind
sounded like the sighing of a satisfied woman. Yet I was alone.

Oh so alone.

I suppose it might have been
a strange sight, a lone human, on an alien nonhuman world, crying by a
pool, like a little child.